Eden Park 2013 Winter Series

Here I am at the first outdoor meeting of 2013 and at the Eden Park Raceway track.
A very different layout today and on face value before practice, it looks real good.

Practice

The club runs open practice so it was perfect for some very early testing.

Today i was testing various items and actually trying to run my RB6 as light as possible.
At home the car all up was actually under weight so some had to be added.
The track layout was actually easy but hard to go real fast.
My car felt a little on edge although the track was real slippery and everyone was on wet weather set ups

Round 1

There was something like 8 F1 drivers here today but they were slit between 2wd and 4wd. Not to mention other top drivers that did not compete in the National series last year to obtain a good licence grade.

I would like to say that my car was great but it really wasn’t.
This is the whole idea of testing of course.
The club was doing the same thing with their layout. Testing it before bigger events. Mmm!!
Anyways, i was circulating sort of OK until i spun in front of Grant and POW!, BANG!, don’t worry i just popped a ball joint when he drove into me. Before people misunderstand and get it all wrong like some have, it was my fault – LOL
I was going to pull over at that point as when you loose so much time for a marshal to pop your ball stud on (and he was quick too), it sort of feels like a waste of time. A lesson for you all here. Carry on and do your best and you will see today why!!

I ended up with a 4th in round. Grant was quickest with his Schumacher car

Round 2

As I mentioned earlier I was doing a lot of testing today.

I changed loads on my car and even added a brass bulkhead on (which I swore I would never do).
One has to test everything of course!!

I will keep this brief.
My bulk head dropped off – LOL

I have no idea what i did but clearly talking to people I fitted something wrong and it just fell off. I am still laughing about it now 🙂

I got a nothing for the round.

Round 3

Now i did say earlier carry on even if you think its not worth it. I hope you all took note because on this round the club decided to cut qualifying from 4 rounds down to 3 rounds. If I stopped in round 1, I would be deep in trouble right now but the 4th in round 1 would need to count.

Well as you can see from the overall results sheet of round 3, I managed a 2nd in round behind Grant that really was driving very well.

The changes where taking place now and although I wanted another round the finals where coming up next.
I was to line up 3rd behind Kit Jones that had 2nd in round 1 and 2 and he was driving well too.

The 2wd A final

Lets go racing!

We set off at the buzzer and i had an amazing start out of my Orion powered RB6. It just laughed off and overtook Kit for 2nd place. Right i thought, lets sit behind Grant and see what develops. Well what developed was the next corner was real slippery and I just got it all wrong. Kit didn’t really get it much better i think and nor did anyone else to be honest. After the 3rd corner mayhem, I really thought i would come out it it all in last place. No!!…. I was still 2nd although a little way back from Grant now. Try try as hard as one can, the time against Grant could not be made up. For those that don’t know Grant not so long ago was winning part of the National here at EPR. With Kit driving real hard to catch up from 3rd, I settled for 2nd and that’s how it finished

Conclusion

The club did a good job as they usually do at all their events.

Not sure why the meeting got cut down to 3 qualifiers though. I didn’t think that was very efficient which is very unusual for EPR. Maybe there was a problem we were not aware of. Thanks lads and catch up soon